Anti-semitism and tolerance in Poland

Charles Golding (Letters, January 31) paints Poland's history as a string of anti-semitic incidents. Generalisation is always dangerous. Yes, the horrific murders in Kielce and Jedwabne did happen. Yes, the anti-semitism in Poland in the 1920s and 30s was shamefully rife, although Poland was not isolated in this respect. But Poland also has a long history of tolerance. Between the 12th and 17th centuries, Jews expelled from Britain, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy and other western countries settled there and were granted special rights and privileges. Poland became host to the largest concentration of Jews in Europe and the most potent hub for Jewish culture. (A historically balanced view of the Polish-Jewish history is presented on the
PolishJews.org website.)

It's a shame Mr Golding does not mention people like Jan Karski, a Polish emissary who in 1942-43 informed the British and Americans about the situation in the Warsaw ghetto and the Holocaust of the Jews. However, the biggest injustice this letter does is to the thousands of Polish people who risked, and often lost, their lives trying to save Jews in occupied Poland. According to Yad Vashem Institute's statistics, Poland has the largest number of the Righteous Among the Nations: 5,941, compared to Great Britain's 13 and the US's two. It is grossly unfair to call these people's efforts "marginal".Barbara Chadwick Coventry

Before the discussion about Poland and the Jews descends into a competition to nominate who is the beastliest - Germans, Poles, or Jews for blaming Poles - could I suggest that the route out of this squabbling is an acknowledgment of a sequence of horrors that killed millions of Poles who were Jewish and millions of Poles who weren't Jewish, and "transferred" millions of Germans westwards, with untold numbers killed?Michael Rosen London